Facebook has come a long way to become one of the most mobile-oriented social media platform. Today, more users than ever access Facebook via the mobile app. But there is one thing that remains harder to do from the app, that is sharing links to external websites.

Thankfully, it seems like Facebook has found a way and is currently testing it in the US.

Links are among the top most engaging updates on Facebook. Yet, sharing links on the Facebook mobile app is not a very intuitive thing. Actually, there’s only now way to do so from the app: copy & pasting, and we all now how clumsy that can be, especially from a mobile device.

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The good news is that Facebook has been looking into ways to make sharing external links easier and more intuitive. And right now, Facebook is testing something quite awesome: an in-app keyword search engine that lets you find websites and articles to add to your status updates!

A bunch of users in the US got early access to the new feature and are seeing a new “Add a link” option under their status update, where you already see buttons to add your feelings or location.

A Real Link Search Engine For Facebook

When you enter keywords in a query, Facebook automatically shows you a list of matching links you might want to include in your update. Moreover, you can even preview the websites it links to. Once you find something you like, one tap will include it in your status update.

It seems that the results are ranked by how likely users are to share a specific link, highlighting recently published sites that have already been shared by other users.

A Tap Into Google’s Business?

Although this new feature is only available to a few US users right now, there is a huge potential in it. Facebook indicates that the “link search engine” has already annexed to over 1 trillion articles on the web, accumulating links that have already been shared on Facebook.

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It is easy to see how this new feature will help users skip Google search. No need to switch to the number 1 search engine when the best (most shareable) links are already suggested to you from within Facebook, right?

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Geoff is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of We are Social Media. He also leads the Social Media team at Zimmerman, an Omnicom agency based out of South Florida, USA. Geoff is also a visiting lecturer at Universities across Europe and the US, and an international #smm speaker.